Gatsby

I knew there some something else I meant to say about my summer school interview, but then the whole tooth business knocked it out of my head. (Who knows how many brilliant ideas have fallen out of the enormous hole in my head?)

So here's what I wanted to share: I have over the past year manage to craft a narrative about my career transition that is apparently incredibly seductive (professionally, that is; I haven't tried it in other seductive contexts!). And that story goes:

When I got tenure, achieving the goal of many years, I finally had a moment to pause and reflect and then to realize just how miserable I was and had been for some time. So I quit my job [-- and at this point I always stop to say that I'm actually very risk-averse, and so this was quite a big deal for me --] and went off to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was open to any career possibilities and considered several options, and yet what I kept coming back to was how much I missed teaching, how much I wanted to be back in the classroom. So I tested this conviction by taking a temporary leave-replacement position, discovered that I loved high school teaching even more than college teaching, and thus joyfully accepted a job in the English department at FGS, where I've been incredibly happy. My students are intellectually eager and excited, my colleagues are interesting and stimulating, and the administration is incredibly supportive. And I was a good teacher before [--this is a good spot at which to highlight the St. Martyr's teaching award--], and I'm even better now, with a warmer, more open relationship with the students, because I'm having as much fun as they are. Who could imagine a better career transition?

What hiring committee wouldn't love this story? People eat this stuff up. And heck, I'd hire me right away!

But the thing is, as those of you who have been reading the blog for ages know, that this story is both true and not true. That is, there's nothing inaccurate about the facts of this tale at all, but of course it leaves out a lot -- as all autobiographical narratives do -- and in doing so it makes me look better than I really am. There is, for example, no mention of discrimination and hostile environments and lawyers and financial settlements; I think I'm right not to bring all of that up in an interview, but I feel a slight twinge at representing my decision to leave as being entirely about risking everything for a kind of professional purity in which I'm trying to discover my true calling. It's a misrepresentation in tone if in no other way.

But darn it, it's such a good story! And it's the truth even if it's not the whole truth, and I'm under no ethical obligation to share every wart and pimple of my professional history, and aren't all job interviews about telling the best possible narrative of our lives given the constraints of the facts at hand? And I kind of feel that I deserve to finally have a really good narrative; I never had one during the previous phases of my professional life (perhaps a good reason my successes were mixed at best!), and I got put through the ringer at St. Martyr's, and if I can come out of all of that with a really good narrative that isn't negative about anyone else but just makes me look darn good, shouldn't I get to enjoy it and to tell that narrative with gusto?

Clearly I'm having a bit of a Gatsby anxiety these days. "I'm an Oxford man, old sport."

Comments

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, man, I know just how you feel; I have a lovely narrative about leaving Former College for my current location in order no longer to live apart from NLLDH. Which is true, as far as it goes. But it leaves out the part where my contract wasn't renewed - which I suppose I could integrate by saying, When my contract wasn't renewed, it provided a moment to reflect on what was REALLY important to me, etc. etc.

And yet, you know, I don't think it's a bad thing to create these narratives - as you say, that's what a job interview is about. I think the problem with Gatsby (which I haven't read since high school, so take this with a grain of salt) is that he can't keep a very good grasp on what parts of the narrative he's created and what parts he hasn't.

[ppb]

As someone who has yet to create a good narrative about why I left College of Plagarism that doesn't sound either flakey or bitter, I think you've done a beautiful job.
Rewrite my story!

[Rev. Dr. Mom]

Have you ever looked through one of those little prism thingies where you see the image in multiples that shift as you turn the prism ? I think the truth about our lives is sort of like that: it looks different from different perspectives, always sort of shifting around. You're telling the story from one perspective, and that it's a positive perspective can only be a good thing.

[Thoroughly Educated]

I love Rev. Dr. Mom's image. It doesn't just capture the idea of narratives retold from changing perspectives, but it captures the sense of that moment when you suddenly see your situation - or your past - in a whole new light.

[Flavia]

If you can tell it, and if it speaks to *a* truth, then I call it true. As many of your other commenters are saying, there are lots of different truths, and "the whole truth" of a given story may not only be too complicated for, say, a job interview--but may also serve to obscure the important aspects of an event for you as well.

I recently had a revelation about my breakup that I articulated in a way that is, strictly speaking, counterfactual--but that I think speaks to a larger truth in a really useful and illuminating way. When I told this new narrative to a friend who's also a colleague, her response was, "that's awesome! and it's totally true, too!" When I told it to a non-academic friend, however, that friend said, "uh. . . but you know that's not how it actually happened, right?"

Such literal-mindedness gets us nowhere!

[PK]

Well. But the omissions do as much to protect the identity of the guilty (being the discriminatory college) as much as anything. When you say you were miserable, that naturally indicates that it wasn't all just a happy parting. If someone then wants to know why you were miserable, and you choose not to be direct or truthful in that answer (although I think discretion is still allowed), then maybe you can feel guilty. Otherwise, I think you're doing no harm.
And good for you!